Thick As Mince?

In the interest of balance I read this article from CNN a couple of weeks ago - straight from the horse's mouth - http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/01/opinions/uk-us-brexit-david-davis-oped/index.html. Dominic Cummings described David Davis as "thick as mince"; on this evidence it's hard to disagree.

Why I'm Voting For Daisy Cooper

A short video on why Daisy has my vote - Go on - watch it - it's only 60 seconds! Enjoy!

I'm Voting For Daisy!

I Don't Want Labour To Win This Time

[typo correction 16/09/18]

Truth be told I'd rather Labour lost this election. Fortunately that is the most likely outcome despite the surprisingly good campaign the Party has run. The polling firms that place the parties neck and neck (Survation and YouGov) use a higher weighting for the likelihood that young voters will actually get out and vote - so unless something remarkable happens I can't see anything other than a Tory majority (though under 30's break 70:30 in Labour's favour so there is still an outside chance).

The Reports Of Europe's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Shouldn't Europe have fallen apart by now? Europe has had three vitally important elections (Austria, Holland, France) since Britain voted to leave the EU and in each case the pro-EU parties have triumphed. So much for the gleeful predictions by the doom-mongers that the EU would fall apart once Britain leaves. The only thing that will fall apart when Britain leaves the EU is Britain.

I guess they had not taken into account the extent to which Europeans realise that despite all it's faults the EU is still a force for unity and peace on a continent that has been wracked by war for centuries. That failure of comprehension is of a piece with the standard British arrogance implicit in the "they need us more than we need them" argument wheeled out during the referendum campaign. It turns out they don't need us after all.

Meanwhile, quietly and largely unremarked, the EU is continuing a period of sustained growth while Britain is heading toward Brexit-induced recession. The British economy is entering a long-anticipated downturn triggered by Sterling's 20% slide since the referendum - prices are up, wages are down, the savings ratio is at its lowest since the financial crisis and the level of private debt is at its highest. House prices in the UK are now at their highest in relation to average income since before the financial crisis, which lest we forget was caused by bad mortgage debt and over-leverage.

The economy has been kept afloat since the referendum by consumer spending but with inflation now outstripping wage rises and savings running down only resorting to more borrowing can keep the spending binge going at its previous level. With interest rates likely to be heading up that is not a good place to be. I fear we are heading for a hard landing in the next couple of years. If the Tories do, as seems certain, get their majority and their mandate to go ahead and implement their long-sought Brexit they will truly own the economic mess that unfolds. This will be hung around their necks like a millstone at every election for a generation. We still talk about the Winter Of Discontent, the Poll Tax, the Financial Crisis. The Tories will own Brexit and it will sink them.

Sadly the Labour Party has not had the foresight to oppose Brexit - it has meekly fallen into line behind the Tories. More fool them. Claiming that they are "accepting the will of the people" is a lame excuse - I have had conversations with people on the doorstep saying that they voted Remain but now back Brexit because "that's democracy". Well, no, it isn't. Political parties are frequently given a mandate at General Elections to implement truly wrong-headed policies; that does not preclude HM Opposition from pointing out that however democratically arrived at the policy is still wrong. They don't have to suddenly agree with everything in the governing party's manifesto simply because they lost the election. Those same wrong-headed policies are subsequently reversed when they prove to be have been a mistake. Take the Poll Tax as an example - an overweening Government with a large majority forced through a policy which half the country thought was wrong. Subsequently pretty much the whole country realised it was in fact a huge mistake and it was abandoned, having taken the Prime Minister with it. The same applies here - Brexit is wrong, a mistake, an enormous miscalculation; it can, should and will be reversed once the full repercussions become clear to all.

So while Europe continues to flourish as Britain sinks - falling behind the EU in the queue for that trade deal with the US, losing our European financial supremacy to Paris, Dublin and Frankfurt, incomes falling as WTO tariffs eat into wages - we will have the opportunity to realise our own stupidity and at some point, maybe 2022, maybe beyond, to elect a Government that pledges to rejoin the single market and put an end to the madness.

It's not over yet ...

I have always said that the fight to prevent Brexit is not yet over and that we would get a chance to overturn it - either via a second referendum during the transition phase or via the 2020 General Election falling during that transition. Instead it has arrived early in the form of a snap General Election in June. This is great news and I salute Theresa May's courage in allowing the voting public a second chance having seen the disaster unfolding before us. She has seen the divisions the vote has created and the fact that in contrast to the opinions of the 'they need us more than we need them' brigade the EU is going to ensure the UK is worse off outside the EU than in.

This is the chance to decide whether this is still a country worth living in or actually a xenophobic little island off the coast of Europe spending its time looking back to the 1950's through sepia-tinted spectacles.

It is also a gift horse for those (like me) who want to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. It's nothing personal - he seems like a great bloke and all those who meet him say the same - but he is not a leader and he is not a winner in the eyes of the voters. I would urge everyone - Labour, Green, Tories - who wants to remain in the EU or at least the single market to follow Tim Farron's lead and vote for the Lib Dems as the only party to categorically state that its objective is to keep us in the EU. The Lib Dems are standing up for the 48% - let's give them our backing.

Now, time to find out who is the Lib Dem candidate for St Albans ... 

Article 50

Article 50 has been triggered and so now begins the inevitable process of realisation by Paul Nutty and his jubilant UKIPs that their dreams of control over immigration or even, amongst their more extreme supporters, repatriation of non-UK nationals are just pie in the sky. UKIP doesn't live in the real world, but then Nutty himself comes across as just a slightly dim Scouser with a penchant for exaggeration, which doesn't say much for the sharpness of the rest of the party that chose him as leader.

I am not sure whether in their blind obsession the UKIPs realised that the majority of immigration into the UK comes from non-EU countries; maybe it passed them by. Non-EU migration is managed by a visa system - the same sort of visa system which the Government will now extend to EU citizens. So - just to spell it out for those of UKIP-level intelligence - the visa system which is supposed to control future EU immigration has been in use for all the time that the Conservative government(s) were pledged to reduce migration to the 10's of thousands and has manifestly failed to make a dent in the largest element of our total inward migration. The Government had the tools and the opportunity to more than halve net migration but failed to do so; UKIP need to ask themselves why that is. Is it possible that the levels of immigration we have seen are actually driven by business need rather than the mythical benefit tourism? Could it be that immigrants have been coming here to work rather than to scrounge? And is it remotely realistic to expect any government of any hue (other than perhaps a proto-fascist UKIP government - God forbid) to actually restrict immigration when they known that it will harm UK businesses? Of course it's not; it won't happen.

Immigration will not be reduced by our exiting the EU. The UKIPs will no doubt shout and wail and stamp their little feet but the Government will merely point out that they have fulfilled their promise to 'take back control' of immigration and don't plan to actually reduce it. Oh what fun we are going to have when those poor deluded muppets realise they have been conned. No doubt there'll be protests; Nigel Farage will most likely become UKIP leader, again, to lead some kind of citizens popular uprising of the sort he threatened shortly after the referendum when he thought things were not going his way. Maybe there'll be pogroms? Vigilantes to hunt down 'illegals'?

You may think this is a flippant post, but when I listen to intelligent, mainstream Conservatives (not yet an oxymoron) like Nicky Morgan, Anna Soubry, Michael Heseltine and Spreadsheet Phil who understand the importance of immigration and the Single Market to the UK economy it throws into stark relief the extent to which the Tory Party and the political agenda in general has been hijacked by lunatic Brexiters. If anyone thinks those protectionist, anti-business ideologues are going to improve the lives of the down-trodden workers of the UK they are deluded.

Article 50 has been triggered and we are leaving the EU. I hope the UKIPs are braced for the slap in the face they are about to receive over immigration.

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics

Patriotism

I couldn't resist publishing these quotes from Samuel Johnson (he of the Dictionary fame) c 1770, given the pseudo-patriotic tub-thumping rubbish spouted by crypto-fascists like Farage and Trump:

"A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errors and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion."

... quite. ie. Don't incite the mob by spreading alarmist falsehoods eg. to denigrate minorities - Germany 1930s, Britain/USA 2016.

"It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see public dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities..."

... does that sound a little like "70 million Turks planning to head to Britain"?

"Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight."

... could be either of Farage and Trump.

And finally, as (mis-)quoted by Bob Dylan in "Sweetheart Like You" - "Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings."

Who is really to blame for Brexit?

Since the vote to leave the EU, 'Remainers' such as I have been told repeatedly that "we just don't get it". That the 'Leavers' are sick of "being told what to think by a metropolitan liberal elite". You cannot be serious ...

The theory goes that the Leavers in the main come from communities 'left behind' by the rapid pace of global economic change. They see changes happening around them over which they feel they have no control - their communities changing due to immigration from within and without the EU, their wages stagnating, the economic divide between London and the rest of the country widening. They feel that their elected representatives don't actually represent them at all; that they are all cut from the same cloth - a CV that reads public school, Oxbridge, Special Advisor, Member of Parliament. We are told that people are rebelling against "politics as usual" and political party manifestos with barely a cigarette paper between them, that people want a change of government to mean something. Sound familiar? Well it should do - we have heard it ad infinitum. The problem is that this has nothing to do with political correctness ("gone mad"), or the machinations of a cross-party liberal elite and everything to do with the economics we have voted for at every General Election since 1979.

Put simply, placing the blame for the current wave of discontent on a liberal elite is nonsense because for the last 40 years we have got the politicians and the politics we deserve. Since 1979 we have been subject to an economic orthodoxy which holds that small-state, low-tax economies will grow faster and create more wealth, and that this wealth will trickle down from the risk-takers to the rest of society. This neo-liberal economic agenda was combined with aggressive globalisation - barriers to trade and to movements of capital were removed to expose business to the rigours of international competition in order to drive down costs, to create efficiencies and to allow the invisible hand of the market to find the true value of any commodity - be it labour, finished goods, raw materials, or currencies. This globalisation pits workers in the UK against workers anywhere else in the world in terms of competing for work - if workers in the UK are too expensive they will very quickly find themselves out of work.

Neo-liberalism has become the de-facto 'normal' economic and political model of our times. This has forced all mainstream politicians to accept it as the basis of their manifesto for government. No UK government has challenged this orthodoxy since 1979 and whenever the Labour Party put a more interventionist, higher-tax, larger-state proposal to the country it got crucified - 1983, 1987, 1992, 2015. This is the political choice we have made. The electorate have repeatedly rejected the option of voting-in a liberal/left-wing Government that may have redistributed wealth more fairly and may have actively supported communities left behind by the pace of globalisation. The only occasions on which the Labour Party won power in the last 40 years it did so by enthusiastically embracing neo-liberalism and being "intensely relaxed" about people becoming filthy rich. When Margaret Thatcher was asked what was her greatest legacy she answered "New Labour", which perfectly sums it up - no party aspiring to govern has dared to stand on anything other than a neo-liberal platform.

The electoral playbook since 1979 has therefore been lower taxes, smaller state, emaciation of public services. We were told that any country failing to comply with the new economic order would become uncompetitive, that anything more than just basic public services were unaffordable, that any increases in taxation and state spending would weaken the economy, that privatisation of state assets would make them run more efficiently. It is this neo-liberalism that has decimated communities, created the wealth gap between north and south and between rich and poor, caused wages to stagnate and eviscerated the services on which people rely. It has nothing whatsoever to do with our membership of the EU or with immigration. The kind of state intervention that could have helped the former industrial towns in Wales, the Midlands and the North in coping with a shrinking share of world trade, eg. by investing in new industries and new skills, were not allowed to form any part of government policy - in the Tory Party due to ideological dogma, and in the Labour Party due to the fear of succumbing yet again to electoral oblivion.

The Tory-voting South of England has done very well out of neo-liberalism due to its proximity to London and the global markets it represents, but the further away from London you go the less this is the case. The split between Labour and Tory voters broadly mirrored a north/south and city/rural divide and it has largely been the South of England's Tory voters, assisted by a rabid press, that have kept the political agenda firmly set against any kind of wealth redistribution or regional aid.

So, who is to blame for the Brexit debacle? Certainly not "political correctness gone mad" or some mythical liberal elite. The people to blame are we, the electorate of the last 40 years. By consistently electing centre-right governments of all parties we have given ourselves identikit politicians with little to choose between them on policy. We, the electorate, are the authors of our own circumstances - had we ignored the siren voices in the media and instead allowed our politicians to propose more state intervention, more wealth redistribution, more public ownership of essential utilities and services instead of slavishly following the free-market doctrine pushed at us by the Tory Party we may not have seen the current wave of political unrest and we may still be in the EU. In short, we have only ourselves to blame.

The costs of Brexit are gradually becoming clear

After weeks of those gnawingly bland "Brexit means Brexit" assurances Theresa May finally caved in to the growing pressure last week and set out to clarify the Government's position. We now know that the UK will be leaving the Single Market, putting to an end to the hope that 'passporting rights' for banking services could be retained after Brexit. Since then most large banks have gone public with the worst-kept secret in the Square Mile - namely that they have been scouting various EU cities in the hunt for new locations in which to headquarter their European operations ("Citi plans Brexit job move", "Banks plan Brexit exodus", "City banks warn of Brexit job moves").

While there will not be many people shedding tears over the likelihood that tens of thousands of banking jobs may disappear from the City of London over the next decade, the loss of tax revenues should certainly concern them. The City contributes £60bn a year in tax revenues to the UK Treasury (11% of the overall tax take); the net cost to the UK of EU membership is £8-9bn annually. If HMRC were to lose only 15% of that £60bn tax revenue then the act of leaving the EU will come with a net cost attached. So much for £350m a week extra to spend on the NHS.

To look at the specifics, according to this article from the Daily Mail - "Anger over £250,000 average wage at investment bank Goldman Sachs" the average pay at Goldman Sachs is £250,000 per year. Now it's probably safe to assume that the Daily Fail has manipulated the figures somewhat for the purposes of the article, as is it's wont - so let's assume the average is closer to £200k. Someone earning 200k per year will be paying around £83000 per year in tax and national insurance contributions. By contrast, someone on the average UK salary will pay only around £5500 in tax and NI. So for every job permanently lost from the City, the UK will need to create 15 at the national average wage simply to replace the lost tax revenue. That's a lot of extra jobs to create in an as yet unspecified booming area of growth. And that does not even take into account the collective demand that the individuals occupying those new positions will place upon the national infrastructure - one taxpayer vs fifteen taxpayers, one taxpayer's children vs 15 taxpayers' children, one pensioner vs fifteen pensioners.

There is also the unanswered question of where the employees to occupy these replacement roles will come from - we are clamping down on immigration apparently, so are these roles to go unfilled, as we are already close to full employment? Will the hit to the Treasury's revenues therefore be permanent and, if so, which services will be cut as a consequence? Or is Theresa May going to have to renege on the promises made on immigration by Leavers during the campaign?

With each passing day, as more details of the post-Brexit landscape emerge, it is looking more and more as though we have taken a foolhardy gamble.

Idiocracy

So the Idiocracy has started [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy]. The worst choice in history for President of the USA has been sworn into office. The electorate set aside all the norms that should have prevented the election of a man who is a sexist, a misogynist, a racist, a fantasist, a conspiracy theorist, a liar, a bully, an utter ignoramus, and an overgrown child, and they voted him in anyway. And in the UK in March the Brexit process will be triggered - the biggest mistake the country has made in the last century, and one which will make it permanently poorer and less influential. In each case - Brexit and Trump - the 'shock' outcomes have been portrayed as a kick back against the political class and/or a metropolitan liberal elite by those 'left behind' by the march of globalisation. The warnings of the professional politicians and commentators were simply ignored and the maverick candidates were elected anyway seemingly on the basis that if your life is already crap, how much more crap can it get?

It is deeply depressing, but we are now in what has been called the post-truth era, where facts and evidence are irrelevant if they don't fit with preconceived opinions. I prefer to call it the era of wilful ignorance - rather than thinking through highly complex, nuanced issues with numerous shades of grey people choose instead to portray the same issues in simplistic black and white terms and propose blunt instruments as solutions. Professionals who spend their working lives getting to grips with these complexities are dismissed as bloated bureaucrats, experts and academics are denounced as parties to some unfeasibly wide and deep web of left-liberal conspiracists, and the entertainment of ideas is dismissed as ivory-towered elitism. The red-top electorate doesn't want to go to the effort of analysing anything longer than a headline so populist politicians gleefully offer up easy solutions rooted in misinformation.

The problem we will face in 2017 and beyond is that the 'populists' have been elected but they will be unable to deliver. The world is not black and white; it is painted in infinite shades of grey. Simple solutions inevitably fail in the real world; if the simple solutions worked they would have been tried already. Brexit will not reduce immigration, or if it does it will be at the expense of higher unemployment and a shrinking economy. Trump will not build his wall or lock up Hilary. Brexit will not result in an extra £350m a week being spent on the NHS, rather it will result in less money being available for the NHS and all other spending priorities. Trump will not be able to cut taxes and reduce borrowing and rebuild the nation's infrastructure - that circle cannot be squared. Brexit will not lead to a democratic renewal in the UK - we get the politicians and policies we vote for and for the last 40 years that has meant various shades of neo-liberalism. Trump won't quit NATO or start an arms race with China. Neither will he be able to improve the economic circumstances of the 'left-behinds' that voted for him - if he retreats into protectionism he will just make them worse off.

My concern is what happens when the populist politicians fail, which they will. Will they then swing further to the right and start another hunt for minorities to blame? Will they propose deportations as the next solution to their perceived 'problem'? Or will the electorates in the UK and the US realise they voted for a lie and that it is the system that is at fault - that neo-liberalism is to blame for the growing wealth gap and economic stagnation experienced by the majority of the population. Will they finally realise that the only way to truly address the cause of these frustrations is to continue to embrace openness and globalisation but to distribute the proceeds of the resulting national wealth more fairly - through wealth taxes, higher income tax for top earners, and the reduction or abolition of indirect taxes.

Improvements in the quality of people's lives will only come through investment in the services that the majority of us use and rely on (health, education, emergency services, childcare, social care, roads, railways, etc), through increased social housing provision, through subsidised public transport, through subsidised clean energy, through a genuine living wage or a universal basic income. It's not rocket science and I desperately hope the electorates on both sides of the Atlantic experience some sort of epiphany but I am not holding my breath - history leads me to believe we will simply double down on the collective madness that has led us to our current position.